Do not bring Your servant into judgment, for no one alive is righteous before You.
Parallel translations
- WEB Don’t enter into judgment with your servant, for in your sight no man living is righteous.
- KJV And enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.
- NKJV Do not enter into judgment with Your servant, For in Your sight no one living is righteous.
- NASB And do not enter into judgment with Your servant, For no person living is righteous in Your sight.
- NLT Don’t put your servant on trial, for no one is innocent before you.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
David asks God not to enter into judgment with him, for no living person is righteous before God. It confesses universal human sinfulness and need for grace.
Overview
David acknowledges that if God judged by strict justice, no one, including himself, could stand. This is a key Old Testament statement of human inability to be righteous before God. Paul builds on it to teach justification by faith, for righteousness comes not by law-keeping but through faith in Christ (Romans 3:20; Galatians 2:16).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 12
- Eccl 7:20Surely there is no righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
- Job 25:4How then can a man be just before God? How can one born of woman be pure?
- Rom 3:20Therefore no one will be justified in His sight by works of the law. For the law merely brings awareness of sin.
- Ps 130:3If You, O LORD, kept track of iniquities, then who, O Lord, could stand?
- 1 Jn 1:10If we say we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar, and His word is not in us.
- Job 14:3Do You open Your eyes to one like this? Will You bring him into judgment before You?
- Gal 2:16know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
- Job 15:14What is man, that he should be pure, or one born of woman, that he should be righteous?
- Job 4:17‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or a man more pure than his Maker?
- Exod 34:7maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin. Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished; He will visit the iniquity of the fathers on their children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”
- 1 Kgs 8:46When they sin against You—for there is no one who does not sin—and You become angry with them and deliver them to an enemy who takes them as captives to his own land, whether far or near,
- Job 9:2–3“Yes, I know that it is so, but how can a mortal be righteous before God?
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 143:2 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.